Writing quotes
30.7K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside writing — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I just write about what I feel I want to write about. I'm like a kid. I get an idea, and it's like a kid's toy that you push and tug around the room. It's fun, it's bright, it's pretty and maybe it'll go clack-clack or whiz-whiz, whatever it happens to do. I like to make believe."
"Constant reading will pull you into a place - a mind-set, if you like the phrase - where you can write eagerly and without self-consciousness."
"Not writing would be like going the rest of your life without having dreams."
"I don't want to speak too disparagingly of my generation (actually I do, we had a chance to change the world and opted for the Home Shopping Network instead), but there was a view among the student writers I knew at that time that good writing came spontaneously, in an uprush of feeling that had to be caught at once; when you were building that all-important stairway to heaven, you couldn't just stand around with your hammer in your hand."
"That's something that is almost accidental at the beginning of a career, but the more you write, the more trained you are to recognize the little signals."
"Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you're forced back on your own imagination."
"If you expect to succeed as a writer, rudeness should be the second-to-least of your concerns. The least of all should be polite society and what it expects. If you intend to write as truthfully as you can, your days as a member of polite society are numbered, anyway."
"When you write you tell yourself a story. When you rewrite you take out everything that is NOT the story."
"Upon being asked by a fan how to become a writer, Stephen King replied, "Write."
"I’m not particularly keen on writing which exhaustively describes the physical characteristics of the people in the story and what they’re wearing… I can always get a J. Crew catalogue… …So spare me, if you please, the hero’s ‘sharply intelligent blue eyes’ and ‘outthrust determined chin’."
"You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas."
"You know what talent is? The curse of expectation. As a kid you have to deal with that, beat it somehow. If you can write, you think God put you on earth to blow Shakespeare away. Or if you can paint, maybe you think--I did--that God put you on earth to blow your father away."
"Remember that 'plumber in space' is not such a bad setup for a story."
"It's dialogue that gives your cast their voices, and is crucial in defining their characters."
"I'm convinced that FEAR is at the root, of all bad writing"
"There should be no telephone in your writing room, certainly no TV or videogames for you to fool around with. If there’s a window, draw the curtains or pull down the shades unless it looks out at a blank wall."
"Stephenie Meyer can’t write worth a darn. She’s not very good."
"Write what you like, then imbue it with life and make it unique by blending in your own personal knowledge of life, friendship, relationships, sex, and work. Especially work. People love to read about work. God knows why, but they do."
"Writing is like a little hole in reality that you can go through and you can get out and you can be someplace else for a while."
"At its most basic we are discussing a learned skill (writing), but do we not agree that sometimes the most basic skills can create things far beyond our expectations? We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style... but as we move along, you'd do well to remember that we are also talking about magic."
